Located within the university’s W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation, plans for the centre were established in April and it was officially opened last Friday with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke, UTEP President Diana Natalicio, UTEP Professor Ryan Wicker and NCDMM Executive Director and America Makes Founding Director Ralph Resnick in attendance.

"By establishing our first Satellite Center at UTEP, America Makes marks a new level of national reach for the institute," Ralph Resnick, commented. "It also demonstrates the synergies between America Makes and UTEP's Keck Center as both of our organizations are dedicated to accelerating the adoption of additive manufacturing and 3-D printing technologies to increase our nation's global manufacturing competitiveness."

Currently, UTEP's Keck Center is leading two America Makes member teams on applied research and development projects, totalling $2M in funding. The first Keck Center led project team seeks to further 3D printing technologies for rapid manufacturing of aerospace systems and is comprised of the University of New Mexico, Youngstown State University, the Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., rp+m, Inc., and Stratasys. The second Keck Center led project team is comprised of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Honeywell, and Draper Laboratory. The goal of the project is to apply findings from the first project towards the development and the deployment of next-generation additive manufacturing technologies into a low-cost, industrial multi3D system for 3D electronics manufacturing.

America Makes first Satellite Center at The University of Texas at El Paso.

With more than $80 million in annual research spending, UTEP is dedicated to becoming the first national research university serving a 21st century student demographic. Founded in 2001 as part of a $1 million grant by the W.M. Keck Foundation, UTEP's Keck Center features a 13,000-square-foot, state-of-the art facility with more than 50 additive manufacturing machines and more than 50 involved faculty, staff, students and researchers. The lab showcases a unique blend of additive manufacturing equipment and facilities to perform fundamental research in areas such as 3D printed electronics, aerospace and satellite components, human augmentation, biomedical implants and future energy systems.